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The Navigator

ensemble theatre · Burning Clown Productions · · United States

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the navigator

Review by HARRY BROWN

June 17, 2014 certified reviewer

My overall impression

I missed this show in New York and traveled to see it in the Fringe Festival. The lead actor, Joseph Franchini, was nominated for a Best Actor Drama Desk Award along with Philip Seymour Hoffman. It was a small show down town so you had to wonder what that was about. First, the play is a real theater piece, not a TV script wannabe. It is thoughtful and provocative and somehow gets under your skin in one short hour. Kelly Anne Burns plays the “navigator” which is to say the voice of the GPS system. At first, it seems she does very little but sit center stage and speak in short mechanical phrases. But, by the end, she is a real presence and is more than a little menacing. But, Franchini is the reason to see this. He covers a wide range of discovery and emotion and by the end you really feel who the man is and what he has been through. In this performance we recognize ourselves and the moral dilemmas, big and small, that we all face in life. I really recommend you see this work be true theater artists.

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the navigator